


Dance for Me

by VoodooHedgehog



Category: The Mighty Boosh RPF
Genre: Awkward Silences, Drinking to Cope, Fluff, Kissing, M/M, Shmoop, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-24
Updated: 2016-03-24
Packaged: 2018-05-28 19:48:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6342697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VoodooHedgehog/pseuds/VoodooHedgehog
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Takes place post-Dee and pre-Birdy.<br/>This is a ridiculous, unedited, un-brit-picked piece of worthless dishwater that I wrote years ago and just now got around to posting on AO3.  Plus, I'm no writer and I don't even pretend to be one.  Enjoy. ;)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dance for Me

It was a furiously, ridiculously cold evening – perfect for being stuck indoors listening to Noel chatter away in a dimly lit Italian restaurant.  And Noel had things to say.  Lots of …things.  Most of them were (as usual) ideas for sketches done in about twelve different mad voices, but there was a liberal sprinkling of worry and vague speculation about various upcoming appearances, including being a contestant on a competitive dance show.  Apparently, Noel was answering his own phone and saying “yes” to everything, which Julian doubted was ever a good idea, for anyone, even…  Just as Noel was winding up to explain the dance bit, their dinners had finally arrived, which made Julian’s listening skills all but disappear. 

Decisively, he interrupted with a few solid words of comfort around his first mouthful of pasta.  “Don’t worry about Let’s Dance, it’ll all be over, soon enough.  Just be… **you** , y’know.”

Noel didn’t respond, but instead watched him lift a noodle-covered fork to his mustache a few times in a row.  Nibbling on the end of a grissini, he danced his polished fingers across the high thread-count tablecloth.  By contrast, Julian liked to think he cultivated the appearance of being cool, relaxed.  It was his favourite restaurant.  Played well, the two of them could sit in the back room after eight and enjoy relative privacy in the low light.  Given, it had been about a year, he figured, since they’d warmed these particular seats.  Still.  Same old place.  He’d rested one of his scuffed oxfords up on the chair opposite, which was something he’d never do at home.

Having polished off most of his alfredo, Julian was now tapping away at his iPhone screen and muttering to himself.  He stretched his arm out, peering at the offending rectangle.  “Bloody letters, they should make them bigger.”

Noel hunched over his plate, his leather jacket audibly shifting, and yawned. “Ju, let’s go somewhere else,” he commented softly, his scampi mostly untouched. “At least if we went somewhere else, I could watch you squint at your lines in better lighting.”

Julian knew what was meant by “somewhere else.”  He brushed a stray wisp back over his ear with a fingertip and forced a sheepish grin. “Eh, sorry, dress rehearsal’s tomorrow.”

Neither of them spoke much in the taxi.

Noel’s flat looked oddly spare.  The furniture, (save an orange leather sectional across one wall) had vanished without warning.  Still, without pause, the two of them shuffled in and performed their usual ritual of tossing their coats in the general direction of the hall closet, watching them hit the door and drop in a combined heap, then exchanging “All rights” before raiding a mostly typically empty kitchen and pretending to decide on which beer to have (when there was only Heineken).  For a while, they sat across from each other in the eat-in, this time bent over bottles, but mostly in the same poses they had assumed in the restaurant, Julian a solid squareish mass, Noel a wilting scribble with one leg dangling.

“Mmmmmm, nice date,” Julian rumbled, disturbing the silence around them.  He wrapped his lips around the bottle and upended it.

Purring in fake-fey response, “Ooh yes, I know, quite a whirlwind affair, wouldn’t you say!” Noel played delicately with an overturned tin of toothpicks on the brushed aluminum tabletop, lining them up lengthwise in long pointy wooden roads to nowhere. They made faint clicking and sliding noises on the shiny surface.  The rain had started up, and the wind rattled the window next to them. Another few minutes rolled by.  When he finally spoke again, his voice had softened. “Ju.  It’s okay, I’ll help.  Read your lines.  You got a copy of the script?  Read against me.”

“Er, I haven’t got a copy available to share right now.  You should have said, I’d have brought…hell, I didn’t come here to rehearse.  I came here to see you!” said Julian, briskly getting up to swap an empty for a fresh one.  He sat down again heavily, a bottle in each fist, and slid one toward Noel across the table, sending the picks clattering to the wooden floor.

Noel barely stopped the beer with his hand, as he watched the toothpicks scatter.  “I’ll get them…”  Starting to bend, he froze, made a sharp hissing sound, and seemed to think better of it.

Julian looked up at him, studying his friend carefully.  Noel had his head propped up between elbow and hand, and he was rubbing his left thigh, his teeth gritted.  “What…what’s wrong with you, then?”

“What’s WRONG?” Noel cried explosively.  He stood up, snatching a tufted seat cushion. “I’m in PAIN, you berk!!!!  Hadn’t you noticed?  All evening, I’ve been sitting here trying to keep from going into knots!  I’m fucked!  Every muscle!  FUCKED! And this thing is in, what, two days?” Noel’s voice soared into a whiny shriek.  “EVERYTHING HURTS.”

Ju scooted a few inches further back on his seat, blinking.  “Everything?”

“YES.  EVERYTHING.  Come on.”  Noel aimed the fuzzy pillow first between Julian’s eyes and then, firmly, at the corner of his sofa in the room adjacent, indicating that he should follow.  He obeyed, moving efficiently.  Shoulders slumped and head bowed, Noel wandered over to a built-in sound system against the wall, and shoved his mobile in the dock.  “Fine, I’ll have to show you.  Mind, I’m not supposed to let anyone in on this.”  The faint tinkling of a piano filled the shadows, settling into the corners of the room like leaves in autumn.

Unmistakably Kate Bush, Julian thought, and then remembered Wuthering Heights and some video or other.  He made a mental note to watch it again, not taking his eyes off Noel for one second.  He wasn’t able to.

It started pleasantly enough, Noel rising, posing, some of it in his usual mannered fashion, all dark, acute angles, all elbows and knees.  He pulled faces, he pleaded voicelessly, he beckoned with an open hand. _Heathcliff, it’s me, Cathy, I’ve come home…so cold…_ Noel hugged himself with his black-jacketed arms, but somehow, became so much more feminine with each step as he glided into his role.  Evidently, he had received significant instruction in the area of “how to move gracefully” and bend and flow…

 _Ooh it gets dark, it gets lonely…on the other side from you…_ Sweeping from side to side, he fell into a kneeling position, fists crossed over his heart, a beseeching prayer to the heavens.

Swanlike, drifting, he hit every mark.

He could not believe he just witnessed Noel doing a cartwheel indoors.  The lack of furniture had now been solidly explained.  At this point it was possibly part of the dance to run over, throw something (confetti?) into the air, and kiss someone quite firmly on the cheek.  Julian put his hand to his mustache and smiled so hard behind it he felt his face might actually dislocate.

This “Wuthering Heights” ended with a flourish, and the dance ended with a choreographed collapse and a single hand raised aloft.

After a beat, Noel rose to a seated position, and drew his knees up, wincing.  “oohhhhhhh, my bones crack, I’m crumbling to cracker dust, ooohhhhh” he crooned in a rasping Cockney.   His face was split into one of his leering grins as he beamed up at his friend.  “Mum’s the word…so…that’s what I’m doing. On Let’s Dance. I’m certainly no dancer!  Insane, right?”

Julian scratched a stubbled cheek, his eyes wide.  It appeared as if words wanted to present themselves but his tongue was too large and was obstructing the process somehow.

“I’ll be…in a see-through red dress, as well.  Imagine that!” Noel added with a smirk and a comical come-hither stare.

Julian scooted forward, resting his elbows and clenching his hands together.  “Well, I think I’ve seen the show before…I think?  Anyway.”  He chuckled lightly.  “I had a feeling you were going to revisit going full drag, after all.”  If he leaned forward more, just a bit, he could touch Noel’s hair with his right hand, and so he took advantage of that fact.  His fingers moved, rested, sank into his dark mane, paused over his ear, felt the perspiration on his neck and the warmth of his body contrasting sharply with the chill of the room.  Behind closed eyes, he remembered the first time he touched him (was it fifteen years ago now?  How could THAT be?) in combined congratulations and secret envy, after the fluffy youth had just trotted offstage, sweating from the lights.  It had been a small place, but that night the crowd was going bonkers.  The applause had been so shatteringly loud.  He wasn’t sure if Noel was aware at the time, or would ever be aware, of his own power.

Noel cleared his throat to get his attention, then locked eyes with him.  “Ju, I…I’ll need some help.”

“Help what?  The dance looks complete to me, I’m no choreographer, I….”

“Help me GET UP now, you nonce!!!!”

Shaking his head and smiling warmly, Julian leaned down to grab him low under his arms.  After a HGHHHH and a few URRRGGGHHs, he was able to heft Noel to his feet.  When he let him go, he still wobbled and teetered to the right like a broken toy.  “Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck”, he winced, and he grabbed his left thigh again.  “It’s my hip.  I feel like I’m being stabbed by poisoned icicles when I move my leg up too far.”

Julian huffed, eyes narrowed. “Then _why_ did you dance for me just now?”  His arm went back around Noel’s side though, still providing support.

Noel leaned into him, nuzzling his collar and inhaling deeply as he caught his breath.  “I’ll be fucked no matter what, Ju.  I’m doing this again tomorrow. And the next day. And one more time.  Besides, I need all the practice I can get, since I’m still making mistakes!  STILL.  Mistakes.  Not good.”  Julian wrapped his arms around Noel, splaying his hand across his shoulder blades, realizing how much leaner he had become since he last had a really close look.   Ooh, he must have been crash dieting.  Should have noticed.

“No, it’s good.  You’re good.  No mistakes. Good.  Very…so good.” He felt Noel’s hand crawl up between shirt and skin, and rest over his heart.  He sighed through the ten seconds it took for Noel’s fingers to warm to his own body temperature, tucking his face down to murmur in his ear. “I’ll tell you one thing, little man, it worked.”

“What worked?”

Julian raised one eyebrow mischievously. “I am officially no longer nervous.  Stage fright gone.  Thanks.   That’s exactly what I wanted.  I’ll remember my lines, but I know if I don’t, at least I won’t have to flap my arms around on BBC one wearing a red dress.”

Noel summoned his last bit of energy to kiss him, hard.


End file.
